Mass Graves and Justice

The Iraqi Special Tribunal, seeking evidence to try Saddam Hussein for war crimes, has unearthed a mass grave in the northern Iraqi city of Hatra. Seeing the headline of the article is saddening, but reading the story is gruesome indeed. And if there is any question about the sense of justice that some of our "allies" in Europe possess, note the juxtaposition of these two portions of the story:

"The victims are believed to be Kurds killed in 1987-88, their bodies bulldozed into the graves after being summarily shot dead. One trench contains only women and children while another contains only men. The body of one woman was found still clutching a baby. The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face. The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 foetal weeks," said US investigating anthropologist P Willey. "'Tiny bones, femurs - thighbones the size of a matchstick.'"

Then this, about the level of cooperation in the search and the length of time it is taking:

"Mr Kehoe said that work to uncover graves around Iraq, where about 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam Hussein's regime, was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part. The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death."

I do not mean to paint with a broad brush. There are probably some Europeans assisting in the search, but the story fails to identify them. But these actions lack any sense of proportionality. "The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face. . . . The Europeans . . . were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam to death."

I wonder if these are the same Europeans that have been implicated for taking bribes from Saddam through the U.N.'s "oil-for-food" scam?